A Good Idea at the Time

Looks like the shiny Superfly SS framesets are now shipping. It should show up either Friday or Monday. Then I just have the fun of swapping over everything from the Rig. Not sure what it will be weight wise, I'm estimating it to be around 20.25 - 20.50. We'll see...

Speaking of the Rig, it will be up for grabs after the switch... I'll be selling it as a bundle of the 17.5 Mocha frame, Fox F29 RL fork, Cane Creek S-6 ZS headset, Eccentric BB, seat collar, and 2 bottle cages. Give me a shout if you might be interested... Can be run as geared or singlespeed so it's quite the versatile frame.

Other than that, I've just been continuing to hone in on bikes/components for the season...  No major changes, pretty much just cosmetic upgrades which should hopefully be taken care of in the next week or two. Gotta look good, right?

The weather continues to randomly fluctuate. In a day and a half I've gone from riding in full summer wear to being coated in snow and barely being able to pull my frozen car door open. Saturday was pretty nice with temps around 45 and a good ride up at Norris with E, Caleb, Andy, and Abby. I somehow made it out there with only one armwarmer, so Abby stepped it up and I got to rock the cheetah armwarmers. I feel they only improved my catlike reflexes...

Sorry ladies, I'm taken...

For Sunday, we made the drive down to the Ocoee Whitewater center for some Tanasi fun. It started off sort of chilly, but within a few hours my pockets were completely stuffed with discarded layers and I was down to just summer wear. It was so nice to see my knees for the first time in months. The trails were mostly in great shape, with only brush creek being a sloppy mess. Riding down there reminds me why I love those trails so much... I can't wait for the Cohutta and the Black Bear this year!

Monday brought back the winter, with a steady snowfall all day. Nothing stuck to the roads, but everyone freaks out and they close all the schools anyways. It's kinda nice to see snow though, since it only happens once a twice a year here.

Good finds over the last week or so:

Recommendation Letter:

A student gave this to my professor at UT and wanted him to sign it as a recommendation letter for some scholarship. It's quite awesome... Clicky

C D Used Cars in Knoxville:

I heard this one on the radio, and thought it was a joke... Apparently not... I'm not really sure who would want to buy a "seedy" used car...

Ok, back to work on trying to be this cool:

Well, before the three day long deluge, I got one nice road ride in while it was nearly 60 degrees out. The day started with perfect blue skys, and I rode with bare arms for the first time since... umm... well, I don't even remember.

Made it out to the Foothills Parkway, and got the lovely road closed sign. The road was actually still open, but was covered in an inch of slush. I climbed a couple of hundred feet up and decided that it wouldn't be fun going up or down.

As I was coming back, the perfect blue skys turned into a swiftly approaching wall of dark cloud... It almost looked like mountains. When I got back nearer to town it was definitely dark and forboding clouds, but I managed to avoid the rain... At least for one day...

The 29er Crew is back by popular demand for 2009 with some snazzy new kits. Does this mean that I have to start referring to my bikes as "XXIXers" now?

The 2009 schedule is slowly coming together. My money is in for the Lumberjack 100 up in Michigan. I'm looking to do some more of the NUEs this year. I'll be doing the Cohutta for sure as well. The Fool's Gold and Shenandoah are strong maybes right now. I want to do the Mohican also. but I'm gonna have to decide between it and the Burn 24 hour... One week is not so much enough recovery time from a 24. Other than the NUEs, I'll still be doing alot of the 6/12 hour races. I'll also be venturing out to some other race types with some road racing and xc.

The rain continues again today...Meh. Dry singletrack seems months away. Looks like Norris fireroad will be the off-road option for the foreseeable future. 

After nearly two weeks of rain and clouds everyday, the Sun finally made a comeback last friday. I managed to squeeze in a nice 2 hour road ride to spin out the legs and enjoy the good weather. The sun brought some warmer temperatures with it, but my feet and hands remained frozen as always. As I was riding, I couldn't help but think that I couldn't remember the last time I had seen my shadow on the bike... 

Too bad it was 6 degrees this morning... Riding in 20 degrees commuting around this week is pretty much the limit for my hands and feet, which refuse to circulate blood. I'll never be next level.

Saturday brought the Rain... The KnoxieCross series began with fitting cross weather, as 40 degree temps and pouring rain made for an epic day. I was not wearing anywhere close to warm enough gloves, and after a lap or so, my hands were so stiff that they were more claw than hand... Shifting and braking were painful, and my lap times slowed horribly as I was thinking in my head how many fingers were worth losing to finish the race. I managed to finish, and spent the next half hour in the car with the heat on full trying to convince my appendages to circulate blood again.

Looking back, 2008 was a pretty good year to be on the bike. I started January off by getting a Soho S to commute around on and run errands. It turned into one of my favorite bikes, and ended the year with nearly 2000 miles of commuting and greenway riding on it. If you don't have a cheaper bike to just commute around on, get one! You will not regret it! Road riding was good as well, with tons of miles, and lots of new routes explored around Knoxville.

Getting new bikes is always fun, and I couldn't be happier with my Rig and Superfly. Singlespeed was something I always wanted to do as something different, but I was surprised with how much I enjoyed it. After waiting 5 months for a Superfly, I was enjoying the SS so much that the long awaited geared machine certainly felt neglected. The Rig has been a wonderful ride, and I can only imagine what joys await me when the Rig is converted to shiny carbon and horizontal dropouts flavor. Despite the greatness of the Rig, there are those days and races where you need gears, and the lightweight ride of the Superfly can't be beat. The big wheels are the real deal, and I can't imagine ever riding anything else.

My mountain bike season started off well with a win at the Dancing Bear 6 Hour race on New Year's day. A shame they didn't have the race this year. [Although, I can't say I miss the experience of riding all day with a 33 degree high and then trying to change clothes in the freezing dark afterwards...] I got my first taste of the NUE series with a good singlespeed ride in the Cohutta 100. I then proceeded to nearly burn myself out by racing a 100 miler, two 12 Hours, and a 24 Hour race within a 35 day period. I really enjoyed the NUEs, and more of those will definitely be on tap for 09...

Alot of near misses this year, with a 4th place in the SS at Dirt Sweat and Gears, 5th at the Burn 24 Hour, and 2nd at the Cowbell SS, Black Bear Rampage SS, and Tsali 12 Hour. Those days are just motivation to work harder, and a win at the Night Train 12 Hour was a nice reward.

A big thanks to all my sponsors for 2008. There's nothing better to roll on than big wheels from Gary Fisher, and best in class Bontrager bits and goodies complete the ride. Infinit Nutrition has definitely elevated my riding with customizeable nutrition products to keep the energy coming for everything from hour long XC races to 24 hour suffer fests. Thanks again, and I'm looking forward to another great year in 2009.

After some initial slacking, I finally got around to beginning the arduous task of converting the SuperFly to cross mode.  This pretty much consisted of swapping my fat and grippy 2.25 acx tires for some skinny 35c cross tires and congratulating myself on another job well done. Although, I'm not really sure what to call it.  CrossFly? SuperCross?  Take the easy way out and just add "CX" to the end of it?  Meh, who knows...

Looking down at the skinnies felt sort of odd at first, but I soon got used to it.  I headed up to Bristol, TN for the Mud, Sweat, and Gears cross series last weekend for some fun and painful times.  Cross weather came and went, with most races involving a random combination of super-gusting winds, pouring rain, and bright sunshine, with a relatively constant temp of around 40 degrees. Being mostly an endurance guy, cross racing is always a shock to my system the first race or so, but it was fun day out on the bike. Congrats to area trek rep Jeff Haase for a close 2nd in the Masters race.

The 29er is definitely sufficient for a cross bike, at least for what I do...  At 22ish lb, it's def a bit heavier than most cross bikes, but in the tradeoff you get much much better brakes, as well as the ability to leave some travel in the fork for rough courses.  Not enough of a tradeoff to make me get a cross bike yet... Although, that Presidio looks pretty sweet... Hmmm...

Oh, and even Lance knows that 29ers are where it's at...

With two beautiful Sundays in a row, long road rides have made a come back. Who would have thought that it would be 75 degrees in November?

After riding for 12 hours last Saturday, I was looking forward to a nice relaxing Sunday. I had an offer for a road ride, and figured it would be a great way to stretch the legs out and get a good recovery ride in. The duration of the ride was never specified, so I somehow assumed it would be around 1.5 hours, maybe 2. Twenty minutes in, we met up with the rest of the group, and it was decided we should ride for 3 hours. I wasn’t too thrilled with that prospect, since I was already suffering on little rollers and falling off the back. I was able to stick it out though, and it turned out to be a good ride. Nobody was in much of a hurry, so everyone could enjoy the ride and chat while I was in the back glued to the wheel in front of me and not talking to anyone. I also had some pretty sweet slow motion scenes giving it everything I had climbing and watching the single digit speeds mock me on my computer. Survival was the theme of the day. But in the end we had a nice 3.5 hours of sunny roads, so I couldn’t really complain.

Yesterday was another fantastic day, with highs on the day hitting 76 degrees. After a productive morning of extra DST sleep and getting things accomplished, E and I headed out to take advantage of the beautiful day. Even though we didn’t have a cue sheet and weren’t completely sure of the route, we decided to attempt a really nice loop towards Sevier County and then back through Walland and South Knoxville. This is the 4th of July route for the SCO club, and we had ridden it on the 4th the last 2 years, but that was it. Our memory was surprisingly good, and we only had one missed turn.

About 32 or so miles in, we were beginning to think about how that DST hour that was so nice in the morning was going to affect the time it would get dark. 40 miles in, we stopped at a gas station in Pigeon Forge (Or Sevierville? Neither? Who knows…) which we always stop at during the 4th of July ride. By this point we were guessing we had maybe 2 hours of light left. After a phone call to see if there was a quicker route back (there wasn’t), we headed onwards as planned. After seeing a sign saying “7.5 miles to the Homestead,” I did the math to find out we had 39-40 miles to cover in less than two hours. Hmmm… (As a side note, I have since been told to keep such revelations to myself if we are in that situation again.)

I guess this is a good time to mention that we were decked out in summer wear only, with no extra clothes or blinky lights of any kind. East Miller’s Cove was free_ing cold at 23-24 mph the whole way, but we were definitely at the point of trading warmth for time. We hit Old Walland Highway with right around an hour of daylight left. We were hoping to at least reach the city outskirts and lighted streets, but I had to lose the glasses soon after we hit Martin Mill, and we were in complete darkness by the time we came over the bigger climb on Martin Mill. Luckily a car caught us right before we went down, so I was less concerned about being run down and could concentrate on descending into the black. On the last section of Martin Mill, we thankfully got some help from a car who paced behind us with the high beams on. Thanks silver kinda smallish SUVish car with bike racks on top. You Rock. It was then smooth sailing after hitting the lighted part of the city.

Our adventure ended with 4.5 hours and 80 miles on the day. Good Times…